BUILDING HISTORY: Downtown Wilmington Post Office

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) -- You may have been too busy taking care of business to notice, but one building in downtown Wilmington offers art, style and history.

You can mail bills and letters anywhere, but where can can you enjoy art with your mail? The downtown Post Office in Wilmington, of course.

"We get visitors to the building just to see the lobby of the building," Wilmington Postmaster Dean Roberts said. "We get a lot of school children brought in to see the artwork, and we've had several instances where they wanted to use the bulding for film and TV productions."

Roberts is the most recent in a long line of Wilmington Postmasters, and he knows this is one unique post office.

"The artworks, the style of the arcetecture, the building was built in 1937," he said. "It was one of the projects trying to invest in infrastructure back under the New Deal, which hopefully brought some work to people with 25-percent unemployement during that time period."

The art here is a strong part of the interior and even features a cameo.

"The artwork here was done by a gentlemen out of Winston-Salem," Roberts sadi. "The female is a representation of his wife, and the letters on the barrel are her initials."

The artist, William Pfohl, was paid $2,300, which was a nice sum in 1940. Upstairs there is more unexpected art to see.

"They were done in plaster bas relief by Thomas LoMadeco. He was an artisan in the day," Roberts said.

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